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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

How the Universe Got Its Spots--Final Installment

Has quantum mechanics abandoned us to a
terrifying abyss where observers create reality? If so, why are we so
limited in the reality we can create? I might be able to make an
electron appear in a given location, but I can't easily produce an
elephant on my city block. Why are experiments still reproducible? Why
are there still rules, like the Schroedinger equation? To a person who
believes that nature is purely a human construction (as opposed to the
more moderate view that the scientific practice is intrinsically tainted
by culture and the human context), the role of the observer in quantum
mechanics may come as a source of vindication. I don't think it is. I
think the distinction between observer and observed is a profound and
poorly understood issue. I don't know the answers, but it does give us
some divine questions to ask. p. 57

I love the mix of confidence and humility that Janna Levin reveals through sharing her diary of letters that are the core of How the Universe Got Its Spots. I like her list of rhetorical questions. I sometimes ask my own, like when my brother recently asked me why I believe in God. (He wasn't asserting atheism, he just wanted to know why I believe.) I think the fundamental answer for me is because my emotions and interpretation of personal experience tell me there is a God, but I hope I have some substantial reasons supporting my beliefs. I'm likely slaughtering the intent of Ms. Levin, but I do find myself wondering:

Have psychology and anthropology abandoned us to a terrifying abyss where observers create God? If so, why are we so limited in the Gods we can create? I might be able to induce religious experiences of various types, but I can't easily produce a Book of Mormon. Why is it hard to make someone believe that the God they worship is a hateful God? To a person who believes that God is a purely human construction (as opposed to the more moderate view that religion is intrinsically tainted by culture and the human context), the role of society and biology in religion may come as a source of vindication. I don't think it is. I think the distinction between God and our perceptions of God is a profound and poorly understood issue. I don't know the answers, but it does give us some divine questions to ask. [This was me, not Janna.]

I don't have a coherent theme for this post, so I'll just jump from quote to quote and share my thoughts.

We
never perceive quantum peculiarities in our ordinary life because the
blurriness of the quantum world is so tiny that we cannot resolve these
effects easily. We don't spontaneously pass through our chairs to find
ourselves on the floor. Refrigerators don't spontaneously come into
existence and then disappear. The world appears solid, knowable,
deterministic. p. 60

There seems to be something fundamentally random about reality, yet the world appears deterministic. I can think of a couple of possible interpretations of this. Maybe there are laws deeper than quantum mechanics that would explain all of the uncertainties in predictable, understandable, knowable ways. Maybe everything is fundamentally random. Maybe the laws of nature have ways of constraining the random to make it predictable. In biology, random mutation is essential all our wondrous diversity, but environmental factors constrain which random effects survive. Could similar constraints be acting on universes? Could universes and their laws be random underneath and still result in nearly deterministic universes? I think this is a distinct possibility. Universes randomly come into existence with random laws. Universes with laws that lead to the creation of more universes rapidly outnumber other kinds of universes. If laws that generate universe creators within a universe speed up the process of universe creation even more, then suddenly we have rudimentary gods making universes of their own. So randomness generates its own constraints just by chance, but the constraints are self reproducing. I hope physicists keep looking and discovering things I've never imagined, but I don't think it will bother me to find out it is all "random chance" at the foundation.

If
the universe had a beginning, it will have an end. If the universe had a
birth, it will have a death. Our origins and our terminus can both be
predicted from Einstein's theory. p. 82

I think I believe this. I believe there is something more to us, although I don't know what form it takes or how it is propagated, that lived before this universe had its birth and that will continue long after it has its death.

What
if this isn't just fantasy fuelled by math? It is possible that
Cambridge, London, the earth, the observable universe are just
three-dimensional projections in a higher-dimensional space. Access to a
fourth dimension would be as mystifying and unimaginable to us as a
third dimension would be to a denizen of two dimensions. If there is a
fourth dimension, the fourth dimension is everywhere. A citizen of the
fourth dimension would have seemingly supernatural powers and could poke
into our insides without invasive surgery. They could access our brains
and hearts and leave our skin unscarred. They could see into our
three-dimensional houses, our sealed bottles, our bodies. p. 110

I find it a little amusing when people refuse to even imagine that there might be Gods doing unnatural miracles by completely natural means. I don't think it's as trivial or arbitrary as some things we might imagine a fourth dimensional being might do, but to believe there is something so beyond our observation as to be currently inconceivable seems as obviously true to me as it is to some other people that this is not the case. I'm inclined to think there will continue to be inconceivable frontiers to explore even when we become Gods. That's the trend of this life, and it just makes sense to me. Even if I am infinite and eternal, what's stopping anything else from being more infinite?

There are Darwinian reasons for why humans are the size they are relative to the curve of the earth. . .

Could
there be Darwinian explanations for our size in the cosmos? Some reason
why we evolved to be able to just barely see the curve of space? There
could, and these explanations range from anthropic principles to ideas
of Lee Smolin's on natural selection. I think Lee would argue against
the former and on behalf of the latter.

The
anthropic principle argues that we live in a universe with these
conditions because they are the only conditions that could support life.
. . . p. 159

Some models
of inflation tie in with the anthropic principle. . . . It has been
suggested that the values of the fundamental constants are different in
different [universes]. The strength of gravity is different, the mass of
the proton is different, the values of the charges, the things that
organize the world as it is. In another patch, with different
fundamental constants, the world would be organized utterly differently.
If things weren't so tuned, there would be no primordial nuclear fusion
to synthesize the common elements, no formation of galactic structures,
no organic matter. There'd be no life, no us to even ask the questions.
. . . We frankly aren't good enough at physical cosmology to truly
predict what kind of universe would be generated by different values of
the fundamental constants. There could be unforeseen structures,
unforeseen life. But fair enough, not us. pp. 159-160

Lee Smolin suggests a cosmic natural selection in his book The Life of the Cosmos.
He hypothesizes that in the centre of each black hole could be a new
universe separated from our own by the black hole's horizon. In each
universe the cosmic conditions may be slightly different from our own;
different geometries, different particle masses, different interaction
strengths. Slight differences in these elementary properties will change
the world as we know it. Most importantly, he argues, the production of
stars and their demise will be altered. The elementary properties are
like cosmic genetic information that will get passed on to the next
generation of black holes and the subsequent universes ballooning from
their centers. Nature will statistically select the conditions most
favorable to the production of black holes, since the more black holes
there are, the more universes are born and so on until it becomes
extremely likely that we live in a universe with precisely the optimal
cosmic genetic information to produce black holes. If we were better at
physical cosmology, we could test Smolin's hypothesis by determining if
in fact the universe we live in has optimal conditions for the
production of black holes. Too many factors are at play for us to be
able to predict which conditions optimize black hole production, and
Lee's idea is likely to remain untested for a long time. p. 160

Why does life have to be like us to matter? I prefer a different
formulation--how much does life have to be like us to matter? I think it
matters if life creates new life. I think it matters if life is
conscious. I think it matters if life learns to create new universes. It
matters because those things make themselves matter. So I think it
matters if God is like us. I think it matters if God is a creator, if
God is loving and compassionate, and if God is a scientist. I don't
think it matters much what God looks like. I believe in Gods that look
like humans--but it seems almost a certainty that that isn't the end of
what God is or what God looks like. Is it plastic surgery that is going
to place Christ's image in our countenances? Maybe everyone just needs
my beard and hair and then we'll be ready for the Second Coming. Or
maybe we need love, compassion, joy, and sorrow in their fulness. Maybe
we need knowledge and patience to make kingdoms flow unto us without
compulsory means. Maybe this is what God "looks" like. So while I think
our bodies matter, and that LDS theology celebrates life in making these
assertions, it's not going to bother me if I one day find out that God
has six arms, or that my cousin gods look more like cockroaches than
primates. I might have to overcome some more prejudices, but there
should be time for that--even if it isn't our universe's time.

The
reductionist believes that every event, no matter how complicated the
experience, has as its conductor the one ultimate law of nature. String
theory is one contender for the TOE [Theory Of Everything]. We are
playing out the notes and vibrations, the symphony of that inevitable
score. Complexity and chaos emerge not as new laws of nature but as
merely the remarkable collection of harmonics of fundamental strings.

In
many ways I agree that this must be true if there is an ultimate law of
physics. But I can't help but wonder if there isn't a much more radical
and deeper role for chaos in theoretical physics. Maybe there are no
symmetries, no firm laws, no rigorous order. Maybe our experience of
order and the laws of physics is the order that precipitates from
complexity. Maybe there isn't an ultimate law, one fundamental symmetry,
but instead many, a proliferation of possible laws, and the seeming
symmetries that guide our perception of the forces emerge from the
collusion of a democracy of quantum theories. Neil Cornish once remarked
to me over cocktails at a bar on Haight Street in San Francisco that he
thought symmetries might just be a manifestation of self-organized
criticality. Maybe he also had something like this in mind.

One
of the disturbing developments in string theory is that there is more
than one string theory. String theory is not unique. . . . Maybe this is
a hint as to why quantum mechanics seems so contradictory--why waves
can be particles and probability reigns. There would be no one truth,
not even layers of truth but a complex organization of competing truths.
pp. 187-188

Fascinating.

I'm
happy with any ray of hope that I might find a notion of free will I
could believe in without lying to myself. Despite the fear that it
strikes in my heart, I still live my life with the persistent illusion
of not only free will but also responsibility. I still hold myself
accountable, and others. But I don't believe it intellectually. Nor to I
not believe it. I'm agnostic on the issue of human will and freedom. p. 191

I suppose I'm agnostic, too, if you mean I don't think I can prove human will and freedom are not determined by outside (or even inside) forces and preexisting conditions. I wonder if agency might not be a law of nature. I don't imagine that human action is free of constraints. In fact, I think that much of what we view as choice is constrained immensely, and we don't even realize it. But I'm happy believing I can choose, and just maybe my choices can make universes.